September 2015

HONG KONG (SE): “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens,” Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us.

The Hong Kong Interfaith Network is telling us that the coming four months are a season to share our hopes and fears about the environment and unite our voices for a strong and binding agreement at the United Nations (UN) gathering on climate change in Paris during December....

Lhasa (Agencies): Schoolchildren waved flags while troops marched in full battle dress as authorities staged a mass rally with fireworks on September 8 in Lhasa to mark 50 years since the incorporation of Tibet into the People’s Republic of China as the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965, reported AsiaNews.it.

Hong Kong (SE): With two Apostolic Letters issued motu proprio (on his own initiative) on September 8, Pope Francis introduced reforms to streamline the Church’s legal process for obtaining a declaration of nullity of marriage, News.va reported.

hong kong (Agencies): “Whatever those in power do, their first question now is how they can best serve their own interests, rather than socialism or any common purpose,” CNS reported Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, as telling the Ninth European Catholic China Colloquium, held from September 10 to 13 at the Konstancin-Jeziorna Mission Animation Centre near Warsaw, Poland...

New Dehli (UCAN): The Catholic Church in India gave its support to some 150 million workers taking part in a nationwide strike on September 2, which shut down factories, banks, traffic and government offices across the country.

Bishop Oswald Lewis, from Jaipur, chairperson of the Labour Office of the Indian Bishops’ Conference, said, “The Church...

MANILA (SE): Bringing the good news to the cloud is one of the challenges identified by some 130 young Catholic Asians from 13 countries, who gathered in Manila, The Philippines, to celebrate the first ever encounter of the Claretian Family and the Youth of Asia East (AEYG + CF 2015) from August 3 to 8.

“Our young people are called to be evangelisers of a new continent—the Internet continent,” Father Eduardo...

BEIJING (UCAN): Courts across the Xinjiang region of China had sentenced 45 people on terrorism charges prior to August 28 amidst a crackdown on minority Muslim Uyghur separatists.

Xinhua reported on August 27 that courts in Aksu, Kashgar, Karamay, Hotan and the autonomous Kazakh prefecture had held 10 trials in recent days, sentencing people to between four years and life in prison.

In early August, Pope Francis declared September 1 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Despite the short notice, the Church did manage to respond.

Christianity has a rich history in loving the earth. It has always advocated the simple life. In his encyclical, Praise Be: Care for our common home (Laudato Si), Pope Francis explores the natural world and environmental protection from a community point of view.